Last night, I picked up the guitar after Gus was asleep. He forbids me to play or sing during his waking hours, and I’m starting to take it personally. I’ll strum a few bars of “Angel from Montgomery,” and he’ll drop whatever he’s doing to reprimand me, “No, Mommy! No sing it!”I feign ignorance. “You want me to sing a different song?”“No,” he shakes his head wearily. “Just stop it.”Meanwhile, Larry has written and recorded an entire album with Gus playing merrily at his feet. So, maybe the kid has a valid point. Lord knows my speaking voice lies somewhere in the rocky territory between Annoyingville and Please Shut Up. When I hear it played back to me, I marvel at how I’ve managed to secure gainful employment. Not to mention a meaningful relationship with a man.But people always used to tell me my singing voice was good. Someone once called it a gift from God, even. That’s pretty good, right? A gift from God! So what if God was hitting the outlet malls that day? So what if he didn’t pay full price? So what if mine is the polyester reindeer sweater of singing voices? It’s the thought that counts, right?Not according to Gus. And it occurs to me as I write this that the last time I sang in public was three years ago, when Larry and I played a coffee house gig on my birthday. For some reason, I decided after that gig to call it quits for awhile. A little voice inside me was saying that maybe I wasn’t meant to be a singer-songwriter. That perhaps I should pursue other interests.A week later, I discovered I was pregnant. And now, I realize that little voice was not my intuition at all, but rather, Gus, heckling me from the back of the womb.

1. When you throw your back out, don’t be a martyr and cut the Percocet in half. You’ll just get the half that has no medicine in it and have to go dig up the rest of the pill ... plus an extra one to ease the pain from all that digging.

2. My husband has X-Ray vision—and yours probably does, too. Where you or I see spilled cereal and potato chip crumbs covering the kitchen floor, he sees only a clean kitchen floor. It's magical!3. When your two-year-old tries to turn off his screaming little brother using the TV remote, don’t get all cute and explain to him that the remote only works on the television. Tell him that only Mommies can use the TV remote to make little boys disappear, so he better behave.